Sex Education and Parents in the DRC

Parents can help children to overcome different problems regarding sexual issues. Making the issue a taboo will bring lots of trouble to both parents and children in the DRC.

It is often believed that family is the place where all children get strong and basic education. Any other education the child will get possibly depends on what the family gives to the child. As for sexual education, parents have a great role to play for educating their children. This can be fostered by the straight collaboration and open communication that parents can initiate with their children. On the other hand, children curiosity must be satisfied by their own parents because if the latter are not collaborative with their children, these will seek satisfaction outside home, which often culminates into deviation and so negative sexual behavior develops in children minds.

The other issue is that some DRC parents often fail to educate their daughters sexually. Accordingly, parents send them to their aunt’s for sexual education. The aunts do not even discuss with the children but they simply tell them what they know. The child will be careful to listen to the advice and no question is asked as it is socially prohibited to discuss sexual issues with grown up people. The aunt is then supposed to tell everything about sex particularly in case the girl has grown up and is ready to marry. For the boy who is in age to marry, no one tells him about sexual issues; he seeks information here and there. Dangers are enormous in this context!

Both parents, father and mother should devote enough time to listen to their children’s questions regarding sexual issues and not commit the child to a third party. In most African issues, including the DRC sexual issues remain a taboo discussion between parents and children, and even grown up people are not allowed to discuss the issue in public. This belief generates dire consequences such as some women and girls who are sexually violated fail to report the issue. But this should be overcome and people should move with time.

Although some people conflict about sexuality, there is conformity as regards the opinion that children education about sexuality should begin in the home. The reason for this is that every institution such as schools, religious institutions and agencies should involve in children sexual education in the DRC for better achievement. In fact, most of DRC parents feel unable of or uncomfortable about talking seriously with their offspring regarding sexual issues in their families. A subtle conspiracy of silence exists between DRC parents and children. Some parents tell themselves that they are willing to answer any questions their children might have regarding sex, but DRC children sense that their parents really do not want to talk about these sensitive matters. Since both feel uncomfortable discussing sexuality, they avoid the subject.

Very few children receive direct instruction from their parents in the areas of sexuality, sexual intercourses or even birth control. This is sad because good parental communication about sex might forestall or postpone a child’s sexual activity. Among the daughters who are sexually active, parental communication appears to help promote more effective contraceptive practices on the part of the adolescent. A lot of interesting studies of family interaction patterns in homes with teenagers found that adolescents who experienced open communication and satisfaction with family interaction also reported having received more sex education in the home.

An open communication between parents and children will give the latter positive ideas regarding Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS and even avoidance to be duped by older persons. Throughout the world, and the DRC is not excluded, the system of 'sugar daddy and sugar mommy' is gaining area. Older people are involving younger children of both sex in untimely sexuality because these children have never been given education about this. Such older persons are very trick to fool children with anything they know children can take and they try to show to children that they will offer them anything they will ask them provided that they sex with them. The error here returns to parents; this means that parents should be sure to have guided their children on the right way and not the wrong one. Some parents refuse to argue about sex issues in their homes, which means they can never tell their children to use condoms in case they cannot apply abstinence. Talking condoms, they say, is to push children into early sexuality. But such parents forget that they may keep silent but the children are well informed about everything from outside, often destructive informantion.

Parents who accept their children’s sexuality and help them learn to cope with it have better chance of raising healthy and sexually responsible children than parents who avoid the issues. Parent should become askable positing that young people who can talk freely with their parents about sex will be stronger and more able to make wise choices as they grow to adulthood. To the same issue, very few children receive a meaningful sex education from their parents. In this way, girl children are usually told about menstruation; the balance of parents’ teaching, however, could be summed up in one word: do not. Besides, except for the occasional or single prepuberty talk with the father, who used to vague birds and bees analogies and ended by mentioning the use of condom, the boy children were in their own.

DRC parents’ strictness of parenting is related to adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behaviors. This can be hypothesized via a relationship between flexibility in parenting and sexual behavior. Sexual promiscuity and he experience of intercourse seem to be high among teenagers who see their parents as not being strict or as not having any rules, lowest among those teens who report that their parents are moderately strict. The results of this is that if parents are really concerned about adolescent sexual behavior, they can err in two directions; that is either by being concerned, being too lenient or too rigid. The more balanced levels are related to more responsible sexual behavior on the part of adolescents.

If parents are open to their children in the home regarding every question they ask about sex, this would help them very much in their future in every aspect of life. Not discussing sexual issues with children in the home may affect them in the future and even when they get their children they can also treat them the way they were treated in their background.

1 comments on Sex Education and Parents in the DRC

Cher, but very few parents do discuss such issues with their children at home. They think every task should be the teachers'. I think parents should be sensitised on this issue considering its importance in the future life of the children.